Grand Prix
With a whopping twelve cups with four tracks each, and with all speed classes open from the start to boot, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe pits twelve racers against each other in some of the wildest kart racing yet! Winning the cups and collecting Coins while racing will unlock new parts for vehicles. Completing all cups at the speed-demon-certified 200cc class will unlock a very special racer and kart.
Time Trial
It’s just you, the track, and the clock in Time Trial mode! Complete the course of your choice as fast as possible, collecting Coins early to reach maximum speed while taking the most efficient racing lines you can. Time Trials don’t have Item Boxes, but you’ll start with Triple Mushrooms, a vital tool for using shortcuts to shave seconds off in the quest for new records. Compete against your own times and ghost data, upload your data for others to see, battle ghost data straight from the pros at Nintendo, and against ghost data from friends online.
Battle Mode
Battle Mode has five ferocious modes spanning eight arena-style tracks. In addition to the classic Balloon Battle, there’s the cops-and-robbers Renegade Roundup mode, the explosive Bob-omb Blast, competitive Coin collection in Coin Runners, and a kind of chase-the-leader mode with Shine Thief.
VS Race
Race the way you want to, turn off items you don’t want to deal with, and set up your own cup to race the computer racers or your friends!
Multiplayer
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch offers unprecedented multiplayer flexibility. In a first for the series, and for any major game really, the console can instantly become a split-screen multiplayer tabletop setup for two people, using Joy-Con (L) and Joy-Con (R) held sideways, like SNES pads. If you want to play this way on the go, pack the Joy-Con wrist straps—they really help a lot for holding the controller sideways and for pushing SL and SR for items, hopping, and drifting. Two players can even get online together this way over wifi! What’s more, groups of friends with multiple Switch systems and game copies can network up to 12 consoles together for local multiplayer. (There’s a lot of variability: 12 players max, 12 Switches networked together max, and two players max per Switch console.)
Docked, the system supports local four-player splitscreen, and two-player splitscreen online.